With 50 days until 29th March, the clock is ticking and many of us are hoping for a WTO Brexit

Louise Mclean is an ardent Brexiteer and natural health writer, who has written articles about the ruinous effects of EU directives on the natural health sector. She lives in West London.

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Theresa May is going back to Brussels today following her visit to Northern Ireland, to meet Jean-Claude Juncker and seek changes to the Withdrawal Agreement.

But we already know that the EU has said many times that they will not re-open the Withdrawal Agreement, as doing so would mean completely re-writing it after two years’ work on the task.

On 14th December at a Leave Means Leave event, Jacob Rees-Mogg said that of the 585 pages that make up the Withdrawal Agreement, 68 pages concerned the backstop. However, he said that these 68 pages were not pure legal text, they were in fact a 68-page list of legal directives that apply to it!

How exactly can all of this be unpicked to create a new Withdrawal Agreement in time for 29th March, bearing in mind that the European Parliament’s five-year term ends on 18th April? There simply would not be time.

The Telegraph reported yesterday that Theresa May plans to put her revised Withdrawal Agreement to another vote before Parliament at the end of February but this may well end in another crushing defeat, especially if there are no concrete changes to the backstop.

David Davis is now saying he wants to present the Free Trade deal to the EU that he authored last summer, but was rejected in favour of the Chequers blueprint. Will they accept this at the eleventh hour, as he believes?

We also heard yesterday that some Cabinet ministers are suggesting they would need until 24th May in order to get through important Brexit legislation – but it is unclear yet whether the EU would accept this and whether it would mean a formal extension of Article 50.

There is also talk of an amendment being tabled at the end of February to block a no-deal Brexit after the Caroline Spelman amendment passed by eight votes on 29th January. Again, what would this mean?

It would certainly mean extending Article 50 to prolong talks with the EU to create a new Withdrawal Agreement, so that we do not leave without a deal in place. Extending Article 50 would also require the agreement of all 27 Member States – and if just one disagreed, it could not be extended.

However, as I mentioned above, the European Parliament ends its five-year session on 18th April and does not come back until July, in the wake of the European elections taking place between 23rd and 26th May.

If we were to extend Article 50, would it mean that we would have to fight those European elections in May, as we would still be a member of the EU?

This would surely not now be possible because the EU has already re-allocated 27 of the 73 British seats to other Member States, with 46 of them remaining empty to be used in future for any new Member States.

It seems unlikely that the EU would want its timetable disrupted by our Brexit indecision. We have already heard quite clearly from Michel Barnier that they do not want to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement to make any changes. They feel they have given enough time to it and need to move on to other things, since there are 27 other countries with their own issues to deal with.

Nevertheless, the Remainers in Parliament will be racking their brains right now as to how to stop Britain leaving the EU without a deal on 29th March.

A second referendum would most likely take at least a year to put together, which would mean an extension to Article 50 of a year or longer.

Would Remain MPs try to force the Government to revoke Article 50 altogether? This seems highly unlikely because of the huge backlash it would cause in Britain, not to mention the extreme embarrassment of our country spending nearly three years trying to get Britain out of the EU, with the whole world watching, only to drop the whole idea.

So the conclusion is that the only thing that Remainers could try to foist upon us is an extension of Article 50, in order to avert a No Deal. Yet, from the above it appears this would not be possible due to the EU’s timetable and the upcoming European elections.

So many Brexiteers are keeping their fingers crossed that the clock keeps ticking and that nothing can stop us leaving on Friday 29th March on WTO rules.

Unfortunately, the case for this has not been properly presented to the country, certainly not by what I would call our “Remainstream media”. The golden opportunities need to be clearly set out, especially if the EU will cave in and accept Article 24 of GATT, allowing us to trade with them without tariffs for at least two years or longer, until we do finally agree a trade deal.

90% of world trade is done on WTO terms and a considerable percentage of our trade is currently conducted on those terms – and of course the EU sell us £90 billion more than we sell to them.

Leaving on WTO terms gives us everything we wanted when we voted to Leave: taking back control of our country, our laws, our borders, our fishing rights and our money, as well as the ability to agree free trade deals with the rest of the world. The jobs that will be created will far outweigh any short term disruption.